The hair replaces silicon, a pricey component typically used in solar panels, and means the panels can be produced at a low cost for those with no access to power, he explained....The solar panel, which produces 9 V (18 W) of energy, costs around £23 to make from raw materials.But if they were mass-produced, Milan says they could be sold for less than half that price, which could make them a quarter of the price of those already on the market.
Melanin, a pigment that gives hair its colour, is light sensitive and also acts as a type of conductor. Because hair is far cheaper than silicon the appliance is less costly.
Link (Photo: Tom Van Cakenberghe/Barcroft Media) - via Gizmodo
Craighyatt: "Human hair is non-conductive."
Uh, guys, Edison used hair for the filament in a series of his attempts at producing a commercial light bulb. OK, didn't work all that well, but it did work...
Still I agree, this thing does not seem right.
Add to this the cost of charge controller, wiring (low voltage high amperage DC wires tend to be large and expensive), fuses, combiner boxes, panel mounts, batteries, and presumably an inverter... and even if the panels cost only 2 dollars a watt complete and in frames, you can see that the savings for a complete system is under 20%.
I'll stick with my proven solar panels, I have neighbors who've had theirs for 20 years with very little loss of output.
@teqjack Hi. The source I read says that he tried many materials such as paper and cloth, thread, fish line, spruce, hay, cork, and "hair out of a red-headed Scotsman's beard" but the fact that he tried these materials doesn't mean any of them are conductors. Edison did experiment with *carbonized* filaments made from different organic materials. I am absolutely positive that human hair isn't a conductor at the voltages mentioned in this article. One additional comment: It looks to me like the filaments interconnecting the gold-like posts in the photos are thin metal wires, not hairs. I am not certain,but I think the black material behind the plastic backing is the human hair. My guess is that the gold-like posts just connect the cells together. Hard to tell from the photos.
The only way I can think of that may work is if there is a coating around the outside of the hair that conducts electricity. But even then, I'm struggling to see how this could possibly work.
Hair today and gone tomorrow? Probably - but I'd love to be proved wrong.